\s tonight, a champion of justice. an enemy of the state. >> i believe it's unfair, there's no human rights at all. >> then killed in cold blood. >> an american journalist was murdered. and no one gave a damn. >> now the years-long investigation. a recanted confession. could it have been a hit? and who ordered it? >> greetings from the golden condor, assad's soldiers are everywhere. >> a family's demands for justice. and what the american government could do now. this special edition of "nightline," justice for halla, will be right back.

♪ there's some stories that live with you. and for me it's what happened to halla barakat. an american journalist brutally murdered along with her mother in istanbul, turkey.

>> didn't make sense. the pieces of the puzzle didn't fit. >> blood splattered everywhere. >> authorities say this is a crime of passion, but others believe the evidence here points to something else. >> turkey can be a dangerous place for journalists. >> the details are out there somewhere. >> these women mattered. they mattered. >> what happened to halla and her mother, aruba, would take me and an international team of journalists and investigators on a years-long journey around the globe. >> can you please describe the knife wounds that you saw? >> there was really only one person who could tell us exactly what happened that night. >> i'm going to ask him directly if he killed halla and aruba. >> you just say, i did not kill anyone. >> i first met halla barakat four years ago when she came bounding into our new york

offices, full of enthusiasm, a young journalist, a lot of promise. >> halla was 23 years old, she was just really starting her career. >> halla was born in raleigh, north carolina, when her mother, aruba, was living with her cousin, suzanne's family. >> halla, which means "beauty," was always so beautiful, ever since she was a little girl. >> if i could describe halla in one word, one word only, i would say that she was alive. in that she wasn't afraid of her emotions. >> hello, viewers. this is halla barakat reporting from istanbul. >> halla and ouruba settled in istanbul, turkey, where she became a vocal member of the syrian opposition. >> we'll stay here, we'll stay in camps. >> which was working against the regime in damascus working against president bashar al

assad. >> it's a harmful regime that doesn't care about our people. >> they felt the assad regime is brutal, and there's no justice in syria as long as he and his family have been in charge. halla was last heard from, from her colleague. when she didn't show up to work, her colleague called her friends. >> halla's friend went to check on her, and there was no answer when she knocked on the door to the apartment. >> so the police came, they had a locksmith open the door. and that's when they saw the bodies. >> it was a shocking video. it just showed an absolutely grisly crime scene. >> the bodies had been covered in blankets, detergent had been sprinkled on the blood on the floor. >> that seemed to be a way to conceal their odor from decomposition, which would give the killer or killers time to get away, days to get away. >> it was suspect from the

beginning. >> there was no screaming heard by any of the neighbors. >> i think it shocked the community. the turkish media took interest, but the international media, it was just kind of a story that quickly passed through. >> about a week after the killings, there's a break in the case. turkish police arrested a young syrian named ahmad barakat outside of istanbul. he was a distant cousin of halla and ouruba's and he confesses to the murders. >> he'd been living in turkey only a few months. he'd been by his own confession struggling to support himself after a stint in the free syrian army. >> she offered him help by giving him some work. >> there is security camera footage placing ahmed in the neighborhood that night. he's seen on the roof to their apartment. the last time he's picked up is a few blocks away. then on the morning after the murder, around 11:00 a.m., he can be seen leaving along a similar route in the opposite

direction. >> what happened to them so is gruesome and horrific and unacceptable. their lives mattered. and it matters that we know what happened and why it happened. and to hold those people accountable. >> suzanne barakat, a young fit in the san francisco bay area, who was halla and orouba's cousin, took on the mantle not only of being the family's representative, but spearheading an effort to find out what happened to them.

>> at those meetings, they promised the case of halla barakat was a high priority for the trump administration. then there was a long period of silence where suzanne heard nothing from the government. >> no one following up with the families to see how they can be of support. no outreach from within the american government to say what the hell are you guys doing, how is this permissible, let's stay on top of it, let's figure out what happened. >> that's when our team got involved with the center for investigative reporting. we obtained the turkish prosecutor's report. one of the first things we find is ahmed's dna is found under orouba's fingernails. that's pretty damning. >> according to the prosecutor's report, he eventually confesses, through a court translator, telling investigators that he had killed orouba in a dispute over money in a kind of crime of passion. >> orouba and ahmed had an argument, it turned into a physical altercation. >> things got violent, she attacked him with a knife, he defended himself, killed orouba,

and halla witnessing all of this wouldn't stop screaming, so he killed halla too. >> you've got a confession, you've got dna, you've a cut an dried case. >> but when you look at that crime scene, it raises some obvious questions. >> there's the detergent. witnesses say it was sprinkled wherever there was blood scattered on the floor. that seems like an unusually sober step for someone to have 10 who's in the midst of a crime of passion. >> there was this question from the beginning. given how outspoken these women were and how professional the killings seemed to be, was this politically motivated? was it a hit job? >> so a few days after the murders, orouba's twitter account was hacked. a picture of assad, a kind of cryptic message appeared on her account. greetings from the golden condor, assad's soldiers are everywhere. was this a clue or just a coincidence?

>> forensic experts who examined crime scene swabs say that foreign dna was found under orouba's fingernails, and that dna matches ahmed aprofile. but the autopsy report says no foreign dna was found anywhere on orouba's body. so there's a contradiction there, and that's the only piece of physical evidence that actually puts ahmed inside the apartment. but investigators, their first impression was that both women had been killed, quote-unquote, slaughter style, by a single cut to the throat. it's muslim tradition for the family members of the deceased to wash their bodies before burial. so shaza, orouba's sister, would have been one of the last people to see them. so we called her in syria to see what she remembers from that day.

[ phone ringing ] >> hello, shaza? salaam. >> the turkish prosecutor in their report said that each victim was stabbed with a knife in the front. very deep stab wounds. you oversaw halla and orouba being washed for burial and prepared for burial. can you please describe the knife wounds that you saw? >> the autopsy reports are painting a picture of kind of a wild -- >> crime of passion? >> crime of passion. >> shaza is describing -- sounds more like a sneak attack, in a sense, surprising somebody from behind, cutting their throat.

>> more of a precise, professional hit. >> absolutely. >> hey, my name's pete madden, i'm an abc news reporter. i'm calling to book travel and accommodations to istanbul. >> at this point there was really only one person who could tell us exactly what happened that night. at 11:20 tomorrow night? okay, turkestan. yeah, let's do that. >> a convicted killer, ahmed barakat. he'd appealed his conviction. under turkish law, if your case is under appeal, you can meet with a certified turkish lawyer. i decided to fly to turkey to meet up, see if we could track ahmed down. so we're heading to the jail where the convicted killer, ahmed barakat, is being held. abc hired a lawyer to go in and ask him a couple of questions.

so we're hoping today's going to be a big day. what are some of the key questions we're going to ask him? >> i'm going to ask him directly if he was the one doing it or not. if he killed halla and orouba barakat. good luck. >> good luck. >> thank you. >> don't be scared. knowinit's hard.re is hard. eliminate who you are not first, and you're going to find yourself where you need to be. ♪ the race is never over. the journey has no port. the adventure never ends, because we are always on the way. ♪ ♪

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at this point, we're outside the prison where the convicted killer is being held, ahmed barakat, a distant relative of halla and orouba who authorities say killed them in a crime of passion, a dispute over money. we were finally about to find out his side of the story. >> okay, that was fast. he answered the questions. he did, yes. >> ahmed only speaks arabic. ahmed wrote out his responses. we had a translator read them in the car. >> you've been convicted of murdering halla and orouba, did

you do it? he just said, i did not kill anyone. >> in his written responses, ahmed said he was innocent of everything. >> if you did it, were you alone? and his answer is, i didn't do it, and when i went to orouba to visit her, i was alone and the cameras did see that. did anyone tell you to do it, if so, who? his answer is, i don't know anything. why am i even involved? >> ahmed said he had been coerced into a confession, thinking he would get a good deal. >> ahmed was now fully recanting his initial confession. at this point, we didn't really know what to think.

>> his interview, i still think about that. he had a "free syria" bracelet that was taken from the crime scene that still had blood on it. on his shelf he had a big photo album full of pictures of halla when she was young. >> we spoke to confidential sources in the government throughout our investigation who cast a lot of suspicion on the assad regime in this. but in the end, the fbi provided us a statement that said that the turkish government had done a thorough investigation, they

had elicited a confession from a suspect, and that the fbi had no further information to question the investigation done in turkey. >> it's pretty devastating. what does this mean as an american citizen, if i were to travel abroad and something happened to me? something happened to you? i really hope that our government will take this seriously and realize that there are a lot of people who care about halla and dr. orouba, and they are not forgotten, and we will continue to fight to find justice in their names. >> i took our findings to congressman david price of north carolina, who knows the barakat family, has had his own questions about these murders. >> you think the trump administration dropped the ball on this? >> i think this is the administration failing to pursue an important case. the answer is yes. we need to press for an

investigation of the trial circumstances. it involves the state department, it involves our diplomacy, and it involves some work with our supposed friends and allies in turkey. >> halla and orouba's case has been in limbo for a number of years. but there is a person at the united nations, dr. kalamar, whose specialty is investigating the murders of journalists around the world. >> what i can tell you is i have received information regarding this case, and in the case of miss and mrs. barakat, there are allegations that the work they were doing denouncing the violations by the syrian government, or indeed by daesh, may have been the motivation behind their killings. my objective is to determine

whether the investigation has met the standards it should meet under international law. was it effective? was it impartial? was it independent? did it consider all the possible motivations behind the killings? >> i feel like halla barakat is the forgotten american journalist. >> experts have said that killing a journalist is the ultimate form of censorship. >> maybe by continuing to dig deeper and turn over every rock, somebody will pay attention to what happened to them. >> and we'll be right back with the final note. ..."you have cancer." how their world stopped

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♪ for more on halla barakat and investigation into her murder, our partners at reveal from the center for investigative reporting and prx are releasing an audio

documentary. download this week's podcast on saturday at revealnews.org. that's "nightline" for this evening. thanks for the company, america. have a great weekend. good night.